


Homecoming

by thecarlysutra



Series: Homecoming [1]
Category: Thunderheart, Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-10
Updated: 2010-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On dogfighting, and wardrobe choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://myhappyface.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://myhappyface.dreamwidth.org/)**myhappyface**. I do not know how she gets me to do these things.

There must really be something wrong with Ray's head, letting Walter catch him by surprise.

Of course, this does not come as a shock to him. The something wrong with his head part, that is; since leaving the rez, he's been walking around in some detached robotic fog, and it was only a matter of time until it caught up to him.

Walter, on the other hand, shocked the shit out of him.

"See you're back to your Standard Issue Fed uniform," Walter says. "Starch and all."

For a moment, pulled out of his automatic daze, Ray thinks maybe he's having another vision. But then he sees the lawman, leaning against the door to his office, cowboy hat shading his eyes from the fluorescent lights.

"I," Ray says. And then: "What are you doing here?"

"Came to watch the fireworks. I got a dog in this fight, too, you know."

Ray shoulders past Crow Horse into his office. Walter follows him as naturally as if he was invited, nudging the door closed with the heel of his boot.

"Plus," Walter adds. "Maybe I wanted to check up on you."

Ray dumps thick folders full of depositions and other yawning, endless paperwork to his desk. "Feeling sentimental?"

"Like I said, I got a dog in this fight. Maybe I was afraid you'd get back to your city, go native." Walter's eyes drag over Ray's suit. "Maybe I was right."

Anger flares red hot through Ray's chest.

"You're making a pretty big damn deal over an outfit choice," Ray says, his tone clenched clinically tight.

Walter is unperturbed. "Maybe I also heard they're talking about moving you up the ranks here in your city."

"Where'd you hear that? The wind tell you?"

Walter goes on as though he hasn't heard. "Maybe that made me concerned about where your heart lies. Like I said—"

"You got a dog in this fight," Ray finishes wearily. "Yeah, well, me too."

Ray drops to his chair, his eyes falling to the mountains of deposition notes. These have been desert-long days.

"Maybe more than one," Walter suggests. "Maybe you got dogs on both sides."

"That's not fair," Ray says.

He could try to explain, to tell Walter that he's become a pariah; to tell him about the way his friends at the Bureau are treating him now, about the phone calls from his father—stepfather, though the word is hard to form; blood is blood but a lifetime of love and guardianship is something else—about how he sits on the front porch with Jimmy every night watching the night sky obscured by the bright lights of the unsleeping city, and tries to imagine who he would be if he could be someone else.

He could try to explain, but he doesn't.

Walter probably knows already, anyway.

"You're right," Walter says. "It's not."

Ray looks up, surprised.

"I never expected to win an argument with you that easily," he says.

"Never was an argument," Walter says. "Like I said, I came down here—"

Ray sighs, rolls his eyes. "Because you've got a dog in this fight."

"Now that I've checked on him, I'll be on my way."

Emotion crowds Ray's throat, and he finds he cannot speak. He can stand, though, and rises from his chair, goes to intercept Walter before he can leave. It doesn't take much; Ray takes a few step towards him, and Crow Horse stops, his dark eyes traveling Ray's suit again, and studying his face. And Ray is hit, suddenly, with an ancient ache, a bone deep understanding of how precious it is to say, _see you next lifetime_ and believe it. And like the vision at the Knee, his head is lost but his body has memory, and it is overwhelming and exhilarating at the same time.

Ray has no idea what's going on, but his body has memory, and so he waits as Walter removes his hat and sets it on the desk behind him, his large body and familiar scent brushing by Ray en route. He waits as Walter removes his hat; as Walter puts his big, competent hands on him, and kisses him.

It is incredible to find your nation in another person. Walter is miles away from home, but Ray tastes like prairie winds and limestone-rich water; his body gives off midday heat, and with his hands on him Walter does not feel the ache of separation from the place of his birth.

The stiff wool and starched linen of Ray's suit mute sensation, however. Walter's hands paw over Ray's shoulders, shoving his jacket from him, crumpling to the floor. His fingers pull at the buttons of Ray's shirt, pulling the fine thread until it snaps. Walter's hands sneak to the flat plane of Ray's stomach, curve around his narrow waist. Crow Horse holds fast to Ray's hips, drives him against his own overly-polished desk.

Ray bucks, unused to heeling. But Walter knows how to read the sand, and the wind, and he knows how to call the rain, and Walter knows how to whisper down an untamed animal, and Walter lays his hands—soft, unasking, just _being_ —on Ray's wild horseflesh, and Ray relaxes. Just a little, but enough.

Ray's body is slick with clean sweat like precious rain, and Walter's hands slide across his country. Without ever visiting before, even without his parlor tricks about weight and carriage, Walter knows the terrain by touch. This is his country; he is just going home.  



End file.
